friday mixed tape: bursting into colour

by Hugh

Whatever you want to say about the sixties, looking back it was a time of the kind of change I don’t think we’ve seen since. All that came before was called into question, and things that came after were different on a scale that has not been approached again. Sometime around 1980, we went into a holding pattern. [note, I think that the networked world will bring the same sort of cultural upheaval, but we haven’t quite got there yet]. Here are three videos, all in black & white, where the colour was just bursting thru the tight suits.

Jimi Hendrix: Hey Joe (1967)
Does it get any cooler than this? No.

The Monks: Monk Chant and Oh How to Do Now (1966)
These guys were so far ahead of their time (and it seems from the vid that they were so crazy colour *was* actually bursting out of the B&W). The Monks were doing stuff with pop music – feedback, atonal noise, harmonics and dissonance and other weird musicy stuff that … well … that still sounds crazy. They were five US servicemen stationed in Germany, who shaved the tops of their heads and played pop music that would still make record execs nervous.

The Who: My Generation (1967)
This is a bit obvious, I guess, but the Who made noise like no one before them had. The Who is one band that should have kept the suits. They were much better before they got old. And: oh, Keith, we miss you.